Bi-Weekly Book Reviews for Ambitious Achievers

4-hour body

What if I told you that I lost 5% bodyfat and 13.6lbs in 30 days with no exercise and only dieting 6 days a week? That’s exactly what I’m telling you.

January 1 – February 7th (I forgot to take after pictures on the first of Feb.)

If you had told me a year ago there was a way to lose 13.6 lbs as well as 5% bodyfat in 30 days with no exercise, I would have laughed at you. In the past month however, I experienced this first-hand. This post explains which book I got the information from and how things happened.

Tim Ferriss is at the top of the list of podcasters that I listen to on a regular basis. Until buying his books at the end of last year, passive listening was all I had done. Now that I’m not under a self-imposed deadline to read a book a week, I figured 2017 is time for self-experimentation. Ferriss excels at this (a self described “Human guinea pig”) and advocates that people optimize their lives.

His second book, “The 4-Hour Body” was published in 2010 and reached #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list. I purchased this book with a specific outcome in mind, rather than filling my mind with fitness information, I wanted a measurable result.

Derek Sivers, one of Ferriss’s podcast guests and founder of CDbaby.com, is on record as saying

“If information were the answer, we would all be billionaires with perfect abs.”

I knew that having access to information wasn’t the answer, it was having a framework which I could consistently apply select information to my life.

If you’re wondering why you would pick up The 4-Hour Body, this is why. You’ll read a portion of the book and get an an actionable experiment to try.

One last mindset before I show you the nitty-gritty of my last 30 days. Arthur Jones, the inventor of the Nautilus Exercise machines, is the father of what Ferriss calls the “Minimum Effective Dose.” Put simply, this is the mindset that says that a certain input that creates a desired result is exactly what you do. Anything less and you don’t get the result, any more and there will be side effects. In order to build this mindset, Jones admonishes on pg 20:

“REMEMBER: It is impossible to evaluate, or even understand, anything you cannot measure.”

Feeling armed with knowledge, I set out on the first of the year to find out what I could change in one month following the Slow-Carb Diet.

1.1.17: 222.0 Pounds // 24% Bodyfat // 122.0 Total Inches

Inspired by stories of people in the book and posts like “How to Lose 100 Pounds on The Slow-Carb Diet” I was ready. I stepped on the scale, calculated my bodyfat percentage, and found my “Total Inches” by measuring around my waist, my hips, my arms, and my thighs.

This is the extent of the rules I followed, according to the above-linked post:

Rule #1: Avoid “white” starchy carbohydrates (or those that can be white). This means all bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, and grains. If you have to ask, don’t eat it.Rule #2: Eat the same few meals over and over again, especially for breakfast and lunch. You already do this; you’re just picking new default meals.Rule #3: Don’t drink calories. Exception: 1-2 glasses of dry red wine per night is allowed.Rule #4: Don’t eat fruit. (Fructose –> glycerol phosphate –> more bodyfat, more or less.) Avocado and tomatoes are excepted.Rule #5: Take one day off per week and go nuts. I choose and recommend Saturday.

That’s it.

Seriously.

30 days later I couldn’t believe the change.

I did take this on February 7th (Oops!) but my Feb 1 numbers were: 208.4 Pounds // 19% Bodyfat // 112.37 Total Inches

I know I was able to implement this diet because I had a psychological “out” on Saturday. I ate everything in sight, the one saturday I documented for the video review came in at a whopping 6275 calories… Check out the video below and skip to 5:20 to see pictures of all the junk food from that day.

In conclusion, I only read a part of the book, but that was the minimum effective dose that I needed to get on track to where I want to be. I’m not to either my goal weight or muscle mass yet. But as I write this post on Saturday (“Faturday”) at a Panera Bread after eating two chocolate pastries and downing a Crystal Pepsi, I can honestly say I’m having fun with this experiment.

Keep Reading, Friends!

Jon

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Jon DeLange is the owner of Jumpsix Marketing Grand Rapids and Director of Development at Lakeshore Pregnancy Center. Find him reviewing books on YouTube as "Why Should I Read That." Visit jondelange.com to keep in touch!